This Hot Dog Just Won a James Beard Award

Last week, the James Beard Awards Committee announced their five "American Classics" picks for 2018, and one of the winners is...a hot dog. No, we're not joking. Each year, this category recognizes regional restaurants—your local taquerias, pizzerias, and yes, even hot dog joints—that have "quality food, local character, and lasting appeal." In other words? Places your food buddy is always begging you to try. According to the list, Chef Daniel Contreras's El Güero Canelo restaurants in Tucson, Arizona are the place to be if you're craving a world-class hot dog—with a twist. Enter the Sonoran Dog, or, as we like to call it, the savory, over-the-top street food you never knew you needed.

So what makes Sonoran Dogs so special? For starters, the hot dog is wrapped in bacon. Then, pinto beans, a mixture of raw and grilled onions, and tomatoes are layered on, before the entire concoction is drizzled with the ultimate condiment trifecta—mustard, mayonnaise, and jalapeño salsa. To top it off, everything is enveloped in a crusty bolillo roll, which is usually directly imported from Mexico. “It’s not just your ordinary hot dog with a little bit of ketchup and mustard. This is a whole new experience,” Maribel Alvarez, an anthropology professor at the University of Arizona, told NBC News. “With the first bite you take, you know you’re biting into something pretty unique and incredibly tasty.” (Traveler editor Katherine LaGrave—not an anthropology professor, but a food fan nonetheless—calls a Sonoran Dog a "Tex-Mex-meets-chili-dog mash-up that I would happily eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.")

The actual origin of Sonoran Dogs is a bit murky. Some hypothesize they first appeared at baseball games in Sonora, Mexico, during the 1940s, while others believe they didn't become popular until the '50s or '60s. Either way, they cropped up in the U.S. during the '80s, quickly becoming a street food staple. Contreras has been making them since 1993, starting out of a food cart in Tucson and eventually expanding to three El Güero Canelo restaurants all over the city. (The original cart is still parked outside one of the locations.) But even though the cart is defunct, the street food vibe still remains—El Güero Canelo customers sit at picnic tables and order at a walk-up window.

Today, almost 200 dogueros (vendors) sell Sonoran Dogs in street carts across Tucson, a UNESCO city of Gastronomy. Contreras makes them the traditional way, but many of his Tucson-based competitors have their own spin. Aqui Con El Nene melts cheese on the inside of the bun; Sonoras Famous Hot Dogs adds Flamin' Hot Cheetos as a crunchy topping. And another James Beard winner, Chef Janos Wilder, elevates the traditional Sonoran hot dog with his J-DAWG at Downtown Kitchen + Bar—chorizo, black beans, pickled nopalitos (cactus), and smoked poblano crema. Uh, yum. But, as El Güero Canelo's award proves, sometimes you just can't beat the classics.

If this article made you hungry (we certainly are), you can check out the other "American Classic" winners here—we're planning a road trip to Dong Phuong, a Vietnamese bakery in New Orleans, just to grab a banh mi sandwich stuffed with pâté, Chinese sausage, and barbecue chicken.